Tag: North Korea

Considering that this defection did happen a year ago it does seem like a legitimate question to ask if this had any political motivations:

A North Korean military intelligence officer has defected to South Korea, the South’s Unification Ministry announced on Monday. While declining to give details, ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee confirmed the man is a colonel and called the defection “meaningful.” He is believed to be one of the highest-ranking North Koreans to defect to the South.

Jeong said the defection could be read as a sign of fissure at the top levels of North Korea’s regime.

The announcement comes just days after South Korea said that 13 North Koreans who worked at a state-run restaurant defected en masse last week. Chinese officials confirmed Monday that the North Koreans were working in China, that they left China April 6 and that they were North Korean passport holders.

It is unclear when the high-ranking military official defected to the South. Defectors are often questioned and debriefed for months before news of their defections is publicly announced. In this case, South Korean news wire Yonhap reports the official defected sometime last year, which immediately sparked criticism that the government’s announcement is politically motivated: South Koreans go to the polls in parliamentary elections this week, and previous governments have similarly been accused of trying to influence elections with conveniently-timed announcements.  [NPR]

You can read more at the link.

North Korea calls defection of 13 North Koreans from China an "unprecedented kidnapping incident" https://t.co/ShDR2iPJuc

— Elizabeth Shim (@GlobalAsianista) April 12, 2016

Much like the Kaesong Industrial Complex workers it is a pretty sad state of affairs when being a quasi-slave abroad is better than be a worker in North Korea:

One North Korean who worked abroad says that as a waitress in China, she was forced to put up with male customers who groped her and tried to get her drunk. Two others recall the frozen bodies of their countrymen stored in Russian logging camps. Another says he toiled for up to 16 hours a day at a Kuwaiti construction site surrounded by wire fences.

As difficult as those lives were, the four workers told The Associated Press, it beat staying in the North. The jobs actually conveyed status back home, and were so coveted that people used bribes and family connections to get them.

“I beat the odds of 1 in 12 to become a waitress … People’s views of jobs in North Korea are totally different from here,” said Lee Soung Hee, 42, who worked at a North Korean-run restaurant in the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian in the early 2000s and now lives in South Korea. “Women in North Korea have a fantasy about an overseas waitress job.”

The stories of Lee and the other three workers, all of whom have also defected to rival South Korea, speak volumes about how different life appears when viewed through a North Korean lens.

The country has sent tens of thousands of workers abroad with a mission to bring in foreign currency. Human-rights organizations have called those workers modern-day slaves, while also decrying human-rights abuses North Koreans face back home. To the workers themselves, there is little debate about which plight is more favorable.

The defectors, who worked overseas from the 1990s until the early 2000s, said they had to submit much of their salaries to Pyongyang authorities and never received some of their promised wages. But they said the money they did receive, sometimes earned through moonlighting, still greatly exceeded what they had earned at home.

They said they were also fed relatively well, placed under less strict surveillance and given a rare chance to see the world and learn truths about their homeland.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link.

The North Koreans continue to find different ways to mock President Obama.  At least this time they did not resort to racism:

North Korea has tried warnings of nuclear attack and racist diatribes to criticize U.S. President Barack Obama. Now it’s turning to Abraham Lincoln.

North Korea’s state media have constructed an imaginary letter from the 16th U.S. president that attacks Obama’s “deception” over Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. It is the latest response from the North to rising animosity with Washington following Pyongyang’s nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year.

The letter, posted only in Korean on the DPRK Today website, is likely aimed at a domestic audience. DPRK Today is a relatively little known outlet compared with the North’s main Korean Central News Agency and the Rodong Sinmun newspaper, which outsiders regularly check to find news from the authoritarian country.

The letter is titled “Advice from Lincoln to Obama.”

“Hey, Obama,” it begins. “I know you have a lot on your mind these days … I’ve decided to give you a little advice after seeing you lost in thought before my portrait during a recent Easter Prayer Breakfast.”

In the letter, Lincoln derides Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning push to build a nuclear-free world by questioning why the United States has not taken the initiative to scale back its nuclear arsenal first, even as it asks countries such as North Korea to scrap their atomic programs.

“If the United States, a country with the world’s largest nuclear weapons stockpile, only pays lip service, like a parrot, and doesn’t do anything actively, it will be a mockery to the entire world,” the letter has Lincoln say.  [Seattle Times]

You can read the rest at the link.

Close-up photo of ICBM “new type high power engine” carried by #DPRK media. pic.twitter.com/D69TLONBfM

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) April 9, 2016

I guess we will see if the mass defection of 13 overseas workers from a North Korean restaurant will become a trend or not.  I would think the regime after this defection would really tighten the controls on their overseas workers by threatening their families back in North Korea:

Future mass defection by North Koreans working abroad cannot be ruled out following the recent escape of 13 people, South Korea’s unification ministry said Sunday.

Speaking to reporters, a ministry official explained that considerable pressure to send back hard currency to Pyongyang in the face of tough United Nations sanctions played a part in the restaurant workers’ defection.

The government hinted earlier that the defectors were fearful that they would be punished if they were unable to send back money to North Korea. Many restaurants have been forced to close due to a drop in patrons, with estimates placing roughly half of them unable to send money back to the North.

The official who spoke on condition of anonymity, said one restaurant serving staff testified that with tough sanctions taking hold, people felt there was no hope for the North Korean regime.

He said a second worker confirmed she watched South Korean TV dramas and knew about life in the South, while another said she realized what happiness was really like while living abroad, and did not want to go back to the North.

“They expressed a desire to live their lives as South Koreans and believed the joint action was their last chance to get away from the North,” the official said. He added the defectors had Internet connection to the outside world, which is not possible inside their isolationist homeland.

“Such information (about the world at large) caused them to crave freedom,” the official claimed.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Beautiful day in a North Korean coal mine. #production #accordions pic.twitter.com/WyvfHCatwT

— Adam Cathcart (@adamcathcart) April 7, 2016

North Korean radar and anti-aircraft batteries along the DMZ would probably locate and take out a number of the drones.  I think such an idea would actually work better if executed by activist groups in China if they are able to not get cracked down on by the Chinese authorities:

A researcher has called on the United States to consider using drones to send USB sticks with information that can effectively win the hearts of North Koreans and provide them with information about the outside world.

Senior Researcher Kim Yon-ho at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies made the call in his recent contribution to Foreign Policy on Saturday.

Kim said that there are limitations to the conventional methods of smuggling high-tech data into North Korea, claiming that delivering USBs with drones is a high-tech alternative to traditional smuggling tactics.

The researcher said that due to the flourishing black market and technological developments, the means of access to outside media has advanced beyond televisions, radios, and DVDs into more interactive forms such as PCs, tablets and USB drives.

Kim said that USB drives are considered effective means of accessing information about the outside world, as they are smuggled through balloons and easily made available on the black market.  [KBS World Radio]

You can read the whole Foreign Policy article at this link.  The article pretty much makes the case that I have been making for year to execute a coordinated information warfare strategy within North Korea which should be part of a larger strategy to undermine the legitimacy of the Kim regime.

Who knows if this is true or not, but I would not be surprised at all if China is claiming one thing to the international media about enforcing sanctions and then in reality continuing to let banned items into North Korea to sustain the Kim regime’s military:

Although inspections at border customs offices have officially intensified as China takes measures to abide by international sanctions targeting North Korea (UNSCR 2270), it is being been reported that Chinese companies and their North Korean counterparts have been disguising military supplies as everyday merchandise in order to smuggle them through customs checkpoints.

“There is a lot of talk about how the new sanctions are harsher than those adopted in years past, but illegal smuggling through border customs is continuing relatively unimpeded,” a source in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on April 1.

This is because the North Korean Ministry of People’s Armed Forces operates a number of entities acting under the pretense of ordinary trading companies, trading entities and mobilization offices that are tasked with bringing banned items into North Korea.

“In particular, the Kumunsan Trade Company and a munitions branch called ‘Sung Kang Office,’ are using bribery and illicit methods to smuggle supplies despite the sanctions. These items include tires, stainless steel, machine components, acetone, industrial lubricant, and raw materials needed for gunpowder production. The items are labeled as normal goods in order to get them past the customs guards,” the source added.        [The Daily NK]

You can read more at the link.

Is anyone shocked that yet another business venture in South Korea is facing financial difficulties?:

The founder of a unique university in North Korea is under scrutiny after the university suffered a series of financial difficulties, according to a source in the country.

Kim Chin-kyung, a U.S. citizen, founded Pyongyang University of Science and Technology with the cooperation of North and South Korean institutions, South Korean news service CBS No Cut News reported.

But the North Korean government is looking to replace Kim.

The source said dwindling funds from South Korea and the United States have contributed to the financial shortfall at the university.

PUST used to operate on a $100,000 monthly budget but that number was down to $50,000, the source said.

A loan Kim secured to build facilities on campus in late 2000 has yet to be paid, and an agreement to replace a 60,000-volt transformer at the school by Oct. 10, 2015, the anniversary to commemorate the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea, was never fulfilled, according to the source.  [UPI]

You can read more at the link.